Day #283

Sermon - Audio
Matt 5-7 - Reading
Matt 5-7 - Audio

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Daily Reading: Matthew 5-7

Enjoy today's reading! It is the entire sermon on the mount (which is ridiculous...because one of the largest churches in Grand Rapids just spent an entire years worth of sermons on these 3 chapters).

Instead of trying to cover it all, I'm going to give you a some thoughts on a few chunks.

Matthew 5.1-12 (really just 5.3)

Poor in Spirit” is a negative term. In English: the losers. The spiritual zeros. The bankrupt, the pathetic, the totally lame. The spiritually destitute. Not a good term. Not a condition, which we are trying to be. You don't say to your buddies: hey, let's go be “poor in spirit.”

We often turn this into something more like: ”blessed are those who know how much they need God.” YES-I have the gift of humility. But this is not that! You know the attitude: IF I AM POOR IN SPIRIT, THEN I AM BLESS-ED....and this is farthest thing from what Jesus is saying. That attitude is anti-gospel.

Blessed. This may be a bit confusing. It's a slightly different word than we get in the greek or hebrew than is in Genesis 1. Where God gives Adam and Eve his shalom. The blessed here literally means “happy” or “fortunate.” Dallas Willard translates it: the highest type of ell-being possible for human beings. It answers that question: what is the good life? Try this, my own translation: “Life is good.” Have you seen the T-shirts? There's always a face that has this big grin on it. And there's a picture of hiking boots or somebody playing golf or a charcoal grill or a kayak....or well you can fill in your own. If you could be anywhere right or or be doing anything? Where would you be? What would you be doing? Life is good.

Jesus has something startling to say: Life is good for the poor in spirit. Life is good for the Losers!

What Jesus is saying is so upside-down, we don't know how to make sense of it. It is....shocking, but also deeply comforting.

Poor in spirit: Not a praiseworthy condition. Not a good state to be in. Not something we aspire to become. When Jesus says “blessed,” it is God saying to these people I can meet you in your greatest need. The real weight of the word come from Dal Brunner. It is the divine: I am with you! I am on your side! Spiritual Zeros! God is on your side.

This is an announcement. Different than how it's often read. Not a 7-step plan to make God happy. Not a command. Not a proverb: a saying about how the world works. Quite the opposite.

This is an announcement: God is on the side the people that there's no reason he should be on the side of.

Blessed are the wretched, blessed are the alcoholics. Blessed are the people without moral compasses. The favor of God is now pouring down on people who doesn't deserve the favor of God.

Our immediate response is “WHY!?” Why does God do this. And that is a practical question. We Americans always like to know “why!?” If someone runs across the country or bikes across the country, there is almost always a reason. Remember in Forrest Gump. He's sitting on his porch with his nike shoes on. He gets up and starts to run. His voice narrates. That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road, and when I got there I thought I'd run to the end of town, and when I got there I thought I'd run across Greenbow county, and when I got there I thought I'd run across the whole state of Alabama....and then he ends up running all the way to the ocean. He decides he turn around and keep running. Some reporters run with him and start asking questions. “Are you doing this for world peace? Are you running for the homeless? Are you running for womens rights? Or for the environment or for animals?” His response: I just felt like running! He ran for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours. He ran because he's a runner.

Why does God show favor to people who do not deserve it. Apparently no other reason than that God is like this. All over the gospel: Jesus shows favor and grace toward people who have not earned it. He eats with scum. He heals pushy lepers. He talks about this great banquet put on by the king who invites, and I quote: the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.

Matthew 5.9-13 The Lord's Prayer

A scene from the Lion King: Simba is living this life void of responsibility with his two new friends, singing hakuna matata: it means no no worries. Only one day, an old friend of the Mufassa—Rafiki, the baboon, tracks him down. That's where I'm going to pick up the story. Simba asks Rafiki, who are you? and Rafiki responds, “The question is, who are you?” So much time away from home has caused simba to lose track of his identity, he says, “I thought I knew, I'm not sure anymore.” Rafiki answers the question for him, “You're mufassa's boy!” and takes off running through the woods. When simba catches up to Rafiki, he's sitting on a rock. Gasping for breath he asks, “you knew my father.” Rafiki says, “correction, I know your father. Come, I'll show him to you.” and so he leads him to the water and says “down there.” Simba looks expectantly, but is disappointed only to see his reflection. He had suspected that the monkey was a bit looney anyway. But then something happens. The clouds part, and Mufassa appears to him in a vision. there's light, and it's depicted almost as if it's a theophany. I don't know if all of you know what a theophany is. A theophony is when God appears, and in art that usually looks like clouds and light. In the vision Mufassa says, “simba, you have forgotten me.” And simba says “no, how could I. I think about you all the time.” And Mufassa replies, “you have forgotten who you are and so forgotten me. Remember who you are. You are my son! Remember who you are.” Mufassa starts to fade back into nothingness.

The Lord's Prayer is an incredibly familiar text to most if not all of us. Sometimes when a text is incredibly familiar to you, you can miss the point. The thing that I discovered to be most profound...was also the most obvious. It stares us all in the face, and we use the language but how rarely does it overwhelm us. We have forgotten who we are. And in this prayer that Jesus has given us to pray, we can hear God's voice calling out to us: remember who you are. You are my son! Remember who you are. You are my daughter.

Remember who Jesus is talking to here. A mishmash of all sorts of different people. Full of losers, the spiritual zeros, the pathetic, the lame, the morally bankrupt, alcoholics, and drug users. People whose lives were a mess. In a word, the poor in spirit. These are people who would've been looked down on by the so-called spiritual elite. Or in the words of the Jesus Storybook Bible, the Extra-Super-Holy People, who make the poor in spirit feel about this tall. Jesus says, don't be like them. These are the the ones described in verse 7 as the ones who babble like pagans, who think they will be heard because of their many words. See the poor in spirit were made to believe by the rich in spirit that God only heard you if you were like them. He only loves the people who measure up. That God would only pay attention to you if you use big, impresive words and long sentences. Jesus says, don't be like that. How refreshing, how freeing, overwhelming and empowering to these people are the words, you can call God abba, Father.

The Lord's prayer is found at the center of the sermon on the mount. And I for one believe that this was done on purpose. It's not uncommon in the Old Testament for the key to the story or the main point of the Psalm or the crux of the prophesy to be found in the center. And so too for the sermon on the mount, the “our father” prayer is found at the center of the Sermon on the Mount.

Prayer is talking to the father. We are like a young child who gets crawl up and daddy's lap and tell him about everything that happened in our day, what's coming up, what we're excited about, what we're nervous about, what we're scared of.

ur ability to call God father makes all the difference. It is revolutionary. It's the difference between seeing our relationship with God in terms a business relationship and in terms of a family relationship. The difference: in a business relationship there is an exchange of goods. You go to the grocery store. You take bananas, they take your money. The same goes for employees and employers. You work for your employer, and there's an exchange they give you a pay check. Some friendships can even lean this way: I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Many people think of God this way. Many people who call themselves Christains think of God this way. It's the business model. It's the extra-super-holy people model. A model for the rich in spirit. They have forgotten who they are.

But a family relationship is different. Different because it's not about what you do—it's not an exchange, it's about who you are.

Only a son or daughter would dare wake up a king at 3 in the morning for a glass of water. And so, pray with your eyes open. Tell him everything

A few Quotes on Prayer:

John Calvin: We pray in order that we may seek him, meditate on his promises, and relieve our anxieties by pouring out our heats. By prayer, we declare that from him alone we expect all good things.”

NT Wright: prayer at its best merges into love, as the presence of God becomes so real that we pass beyond words and into a sense of his reality, generosity, delights and grace.

Matthew 6.19-24

Vs 19 I think it'd be really helpful to define what Jesus means by treasures on earth before we go on: Treasures: money and the things money can buy. Can you take this principle and apply it to things that are not technically material? Sure: you can treasure your job, you can treasure your contacts, you can treasure your athleticism. But I think it's clear that here, Jesus is talking about materialism. Paul sometimes uses treausre as a metaphor. Wherever treasures is used in the gospels, it's talking about the something that's worth lots of money. The wise men bring treasure. And really, all you have to do is look at the 2^nd half of the verse. What sorts of things do moth and rust destroy? What sorts of things do thieves break in and steal? Things worth money. So not just money: money and stuff.

Why does Jesus insert the point about the eye here in the middle of talking about money? Does Jesus go on a tangent. I don't think so. Jesus is talking about greed and materialism and talks here about the condition of your eye as a metaphor.

If you look in verse 22 and 23 you see that the eyes are described as Good and Bad if you have the NIV. Healthy and Unhealthy if you have the TNIV. If you have the TNIV look at footnotes c and d. “The greek for healthy here implies generous. The greek for unhealthy here implies stingy.” The greek adds a nuance to the meaning. And now it makes even more sense that this bit about the eyes fits into talk about treasures and money. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are generous, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are stingy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness.”

What is he saying about Stingy eyes? He's talks about blindness. Even if a room is full of light, if you're eye is not working. You're still stumbling around in the dark. And the metaphor has two parts two it. First: He's essentially saying here that Materialim blinds you spiritually. It affects everything you do...everything you think. Your eyes show you your path. Desire for earthly things changes the way you see everything. Treasures on earth get in the way of your relationship with God. He goes on to explain this in the following verse when he talks about how we cannot serve two masters: God and Money.

But the other part of the metaphor is the other kind of blindness that greed and materialism afflict us with. Materialism makes you blind to materialism. Greed makes you blind to greed. How great is that darkness.

A few years ago Tim Keller did a series of monthly breakfast on the 7 deadly sins. Lust, Vanity. One of the 7 deadly sins is greed. So his wife asks if they are advertising these things. They were. So they know when the lesson on greed is? She asks. Well yeah. And she says watch: the attendence is going to go down for that week. And she was right. It was the worst attended of all them. They weren't hostile: It's not as if they didn't want to hear about greed because they were afraid of being guilty. The study on lust was really well attended. The reason nobody showed up for the bible study on greed is because Everyone was so sure that it WANSN'T about them. That's why this is a blind sin. Jesus doesn't use this kind of metaphor with adultery. If you're committing adultery, you know you're committing adultery. You don't wake up one morning and say: Oh! You're not my wife.

If you don't think you're greedy. If you don't think materialism is a problem for you. You are, as they say in the medical field: at high-risk. You are already showing the symptoms. One of the symptoms is blindness.

This is not a text on tithing. While, Jesus talks about money all the time, tithing is almost excluseive to the old testament. But when I searched the NT, I found very little about tithing. A passing reference here and there. Tithing, it seems is only a place to start. The minimum. Jesus gives us a new standard. Now he doesn't replace 10% with 50% or anything like that. Jesus new standard is the cross.

You might have been thinking that the way to cure our own greediness is to give more. To tithe, to leave bigger tips, whatever. But that's only treating the symptoms, not offering us a cure. Let me say that again: The cure to our greed is not our generosity, it's God's generosity toward us. Jesus made himself nothing.... he gave....without holding back. He died so that we might have life. He was bound by his hands and feet that we might have freedom. [pause]

The only other place Jesus talks about storing up treasures in heaven is in Matthew 13. It's the story of a rich young ruler who comes to Jesus. He boasts that he has kept all the commandments. And Jesus says: “go, sell all your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven. Then Come follow me.” The young man walks away sad. And Jesus says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But the rich young ruler didn't see what Jesus was offering him. He thought the burden to great: He couldn't bring himself to sell all his possessions. But Jesus isn't offering the rich man a burden, he's offering to take off that burden.

Where it says Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. The greek implies grammatically that you're already storing treasures. The Command means: STOP storing up treasures on earth.

To all of you who have put your worth in the size of your paycheck. Jesus says: stop storing up for yourselves treasures on earth. You know the freedom that would bring. You can almost taste it. Be free from the stress of whether or not the stock market is going up or going down. For all of you you work toward the newest gadget, the coolest apparel. Jesus give you words of grace: Stop. stop storing up for yourselves treasures on earth. Shopping will not bring you happiness. Jesus knows that our credit card is very close to our heart. He knows our new ipod is very close to our heart. He knows that Christmas shopping consumes us. And he says: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. There is no real security in it. It will not make you happy.